'Kept speaking about khadi, threads': Kangana Ranaut on Rahul Gandhi's LS speech; issues 'apology' to Brazilian woman
Kangana Ranaut took a dig at Rahul Gandhi, saying she expected a “grand revelation”, but he “kept speaking in metaphors about khadi, threads and people”.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Kangana Ranaut on Wednesday during her speech in the Lok Sabha to issue what she called an apology to the Brazilian woman whose photograph has been at the centre of the Congress’ claims of voter-roll manipulation.
The Mandi MP said the opposition had violated House rules and the woman’s dignity by displaying her picture without evidence. “As a woman, I want to say every woman is entitled to her dignity,” she added.
Ranaut criticised the opposition benches for flashing a photograph of a woman of “foreign origin” during the debate, despite placards being prohibited in the House. She said the woman had repeatedly clarified on social media that she had “never been to India” and had “nothing to do with the Haryana elections”.
“Yet they flashed her image here without any evidence. That is a violation of personality rights. On behalf of this House, I apologise to her,” she said.
Attacks on Priyanka Gandhi and Congress ‘history’
Ranaut also targeted Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra over her remark that the government should “leave the past behind”. Ranaut claimed that the Congress “cannot escape its own history”, alleging that Sonia Gandhi had voted in elections before acquiring Indian citizenship.
“This family has always been steeped in entitlement,” she said, adding that Priyanka Gandhi should “remember both the past and the present,” as quoted by PTI news agency.
She also took a dig at Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, saying she expected a “grand revelation” after hearing the same allegations all year, but he “kept speaking in metaphors about khadi, threads and people”.
Ranaut said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not need to “hack” voting systems to win because “he has hacked the hearts of the people”.
Rahul Gandhi’s charge in Lok Sabha
Rahul Gandhi, speaking a day earlier during the debate on electoral reforms, had alleged “large-scale irregularities” in voter rolls and a lack of transparency in the election process.
He pointed to states such as Haryana and Bihar, claiming there were “lakhs and lakhs of duplicate voters” and repeated his allegation about a “Brazilian woman” appearing “22 times” on Haryana’s electoral rolls.
Gandhi said the Election Commission was evading accountability and warned the poll body that “vote chori is an anti-national act”. He added that the opposition would “change the law retroactively” and “come and find you”.
The woman referred in Ranaut's speech and Rahul Gandhi's claims was Larissa Nery, a hairdresser, who had earlier clarified in a purported social media video that the photograph was taken years ago, when she was around 20-year-old.
She said she was not a model and had posed only to help a friend. The photograph has since been widely used by publications as a representational image — and, as Rahul Gandhi claimed in an earlier press conference, the same picture was found reflected in the voter rolls of several people in Haryana.
